Buying New Video Card

Staying within a $200 budget, what would you recommend for a new video card to work with SL? I am also upgrading memory (from 1G to at least 1.5 but I'm going to see what's on sale and so forth).

I have an 2.4G Athlon 3800+ running Vista with PCIe slots. Right now I have a Nvidia 6150, which basically kinda sucks (came with the computer), so just about anything would probably improve it, but I wanted to know what had a history of the least amount of problems.

I think the second number on an Nvidia card is important - in distinguishing quality. Of course, card memory, too.

Newegg right now has several versions of GeForce 8800GT for $199.99. You couldn't ask for a better fit for your budget. They've even got quite a few with mail-in rebates attached, so your total cost would be even less.

The 6200 Turbo Cache (128MB?) was the neutered cousin in the 6xxx family. The 6150 SE or LE is an integrated graphics chip on the motherboard.

I'll second what Chosen says and say you should go for the video card first. Memory is ultra cheap now and you can get that any time.

Roswenthe, just a word of warning; be careful ordering cards via phone or internet. New Egg is a great company and highly recommended. There are some other companies not so nice out there: a friend of mine ordered a brand new computer, and received a new case with a year old motherboard and 2 video cards that were supposed to be 8800's and were actually older versions... they'd had the labels replaced. Now the company won't even return phone calls. So definitely go with a recommended, highly known company.

Buy the best nVidia you'll find for that price. Discard the rest.

I'll even say- 8800 Series.

I have the 8800 GTS and there's almost NOTHING it wont handle, except for certain points in "crysis" where it lags a bit.

What are the power supply requirements for an 8800?

8800 Ultra is *UNABLE* to run Second Life at hi-res (1920x1024) with evety option turned on (AAxAAF) in very heavy conditions, and i found (incredible) that even two 8800 Ultra in SLI (or a single branded new x2) would hit the wall on low FPS under heavy SL gfx. So i doubt that a GTS would do better! It's a matter of compromises indeed, so it would be "acceptable" (eg: goes under 30 fps) but it's far to be the best. Just ax example of that "almost" that a GTS wont handle. 8800 GTS is a good compromise cost/performance... as a 8600GT would be (if you want spend less).

Hmmm...interestingly enough we just got Crysis and this computer uses the nVidia geforce7600 and it was smooth as silk. Sl also runs beautifully with it so I'm almost afraid to think what will happen when I have to upgrade. I've never had any issues with that video card and I update the drivers regularly.

I was going to ask the very same question but now I'm thinking I will wait.... if it aint broke, don't fix it, right.

One of my computers has the 7600 its great and the other the 6150 not bad.

I am just confused as to what the latest 8800 cards are about when ppl say that they wont work on SL or maybe I am misunderstanding?

Roswenthe I am curious to see your outcome. I spent 300 at best buy getting a card and 1G memory.

Vittorio, whatever is going on with your machine, I'll bet good money your two video cards are not the problem. I've got a pair of 8800 GTX's, and SL runs beautifully on my machine. I keep all settings turned on and maxed, AAF, 512 draw, 16XQ anti-aliasing. On islands, I get mid to upper double digit FPS without SLI, or upper double to mid triple FPS with SLI turned on. On the mainland, depending on how many people within my 512 meter viewing radius have built unintelligently, I'll get anywhere from low double digits to upper mid double digits.

I run SL in a window, not in full screen mode, so I'm not quite at 1920x1200, but I keep the window quite large, so it's pretty close.

If you're having performance issues with a pair of Ultras, I'm guessing your bottleneck is elsewhere. What are your other specs? CPU? RAM? OS? Latest drivers?

If you're running Vista with SLI, then that could be the problem right there. Vista and SLI do not get along very well. For use of dual video cards, XP is still way ahead of Vista.

I use a 320mb nVidia 8800GTS Video Card and it has been just wonderful for SecondLife, at least for me. New Egg has this one for under $150...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130082

As Suzanne mentioned above the power supply is important, the listed requirements for this card include a requirement for a 400W minimum, personally, I use these...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104037

Be careful buying power supplies, many of them are of questionable quality and sometimes the specs are "embellished" (I have seen "630 watt" power supplies being sold for under $25, you get what you pay for generally.)

Its a great card. I bought two similar cards last year and I run them in SLI. Power is a concern, but I found that one 8800GTS drew less power than the 7800GT it replaced. On the other hand, its a thick card that takes up two slots. Running two in SLI effectively takes up five slots. Even with the big fans, they are very quiet. For $150, it is a bargain. If you can afford it, I'd suggest finding a 512MB version.

I would go4 the 8800GTS

but NVidia have a strage way of numbering there cards

so a GForce 7900 is better than say a 8300.

The first number indicates features, such as DX10, or what shader model it supports, so a 5900 is crap compared to a 7300, but the 5900 might be a bit faster but only support DX8 for example

the cheapest and best card at the moment IS an 8800 GTS, also for the moment graphics cards are really lacking behind console graphics, i think later on this year that will improve tho

Same here (i have a 2cd OC'ed to 3.4Ghz... the CPU is far from to top its performance, im sure of this). Probably i didn't explained well: im not saying that SL runs bad here, i just say that with this "monster configuration" sometime i hit that low FPS in very bad conditions (eg: distance view of 512, 80 avs around, full sim) ...with this configuration i should NEVER and when i say "never" i mean nor 1 microseconds 35 FPS (i'm talking about client FPS indeed!). Indeed i see double digits most of the time... and i were replying to that sentence: "8800GTS would handle anything".

My current laptop has just about been beaten by SL, I've ordered a new one with these graphics cards "Dual 512MB Nvidia® GeForce™ Go 8700M GT - SLI Enabled" I'm no computer expert but I'm told it's a decent system will it handle SL ok? as my current laptop was supposedly good but has only given me 1 year of SL.

I keep wondering why people are recommending the 8800GTS... The 8800GT has a faster core speed, a newer core design (same as the 9xxx series), more memory bandwidth (close to that of the GTX), and costs one-third less than the GTS. The only benefit the GTS has is that the high end models can be bought with more than 512MB of memory.

Only reason I can think of: For having a newer core design, when benchmarked against a GTS with the same amount of memory, the GT scores LOWER. Which is somewhat odd.

And the GT can now be had with 1024mb of memory too.

Is true, but the difference isn't even enough to notice. I just don't understand paying more for essentially the same card is all. NVidia has a history of adding new cores to existing cards before bringing out the new series. Every time the new core has been just a hair short of the performance of the top card in that line, and it's always accompanied by a price cut on them. REV 2 cards are really the best buys when it comes to nVidia.

I believe Dana is right, I made my previous remarks based on a card I bought quite a few months ago and I should have researched what has happened in the video card world more before posting. It looks that one of th 512mb 8800GT's is probably the better buy right now. Thanks Dana.

Ah. Sorry I misunderstood you. Yeah, no card will handle ANYTHING. If you're in a badly built area, even a top of the line machine will slow to a crawl. Most "lag" in SL is due to user error, not to hardware deficiencies, and not to problems with the client software. Unlike pro game artists, who know how to optimize, people in SL tend to do a lot of stupid things.

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your responses. I had seen a variety of negative comments on the 8800s, so I'm glad they do work for people, because that was one of the cards I was looking at. In the past, I've definitely preferred nVidia cards.

I will likely go to Fry's to buy the card and memory, instead of buying online, but I might look at New Egg.

There is a wrinkle: there are really TWO different NVidia cards that are called 8800GTS. The original one has either 320 or 640MB of video memory; it's an older design with a slower clock than the 8800GT and is slower on most benchmarks, especially the 320MB version. The other one has 512MB or 1024MB of video memory, and has the same chip as the 8800GT but with 128 stream processors enabled instead of 112, so it's a bit faster than an 8800GT, and pretty much always faster than the 640MB 8800GTS.

Either will handle Second Life well. The slowest will be the 320MB version, but there are some very good deals on that card right now (Newegg has it at $115 after rebate) so it's very cost effective. The 512MB card is right around the $200 line right now after rebates, making it a small step up in both price and speed from the 512MB 8800GT (and a much better deal than the 9800GTX, which has a slightly higher clock speed but costs $100 more).

For people looking for a taste of 8800 goodness on an even smaller budget, there are some deals out there right now. First is the 8800GS, a slightly downrated version with only 96 stream processors and 384MB RAM; you can get one of those from Newegg for as little as $100. Another option is the 256MB version of the 8800GT at $130. Neither will deliver quite as much performance as other members of the 8800 family, but they are good values and will outperform just about anything else that doesn't have 8800 or 9800 in its model number. (OK, I'll grant that a Radeon 3870 or 3870X2 will also be up there.)

All in all, a good time to be buying a new video card for Second Life, unless you're stuck with an AGP system.

The 7600 is a good card and often overlooked because the newer 8000 series is out. Unless you just want the latest/greatest or intend to squeeze out a few more FPS no matter the cost, there is really no reason to upgrade your 7600 card at this time. Put it on your Christmas wish list and re-evaluate towadrs the end of year when the 8800's come down in price.

Well, that's my opinion anyway.